The Mirror Before Her

Chapter Six: The Elevator

I didn’t look back when I left Baguio.

Maybe I should have. Maybe that was the problem. But at that point, even the mountains felt like they were watching me with pity. Even the fog was heavy with her name.

Makati was the opposite of everything I knew. Baguio breathed with silence and trees; Makati pulsed like a wound that refused to be closed. Noise, neon, heat, people who didn’t meet your eyes. I welcomed the anonymity. No one here knew me. No one knew her. I could pretend.

My new job started on a Wednesday.A too-clean building with glass walls and artificial plants. Lumina Content Solutions. I was one backend developer among many. They barely asked for my name. I liked that.

I showed up early that first day, not to impress anyone—but because sleep had stopped visiting me in Baguio.

The security guard nodded me through.

I stepped into the elevator, pressed the button to the 8th floor, and waited.

The doors almost closed when someone slipped in.

I didn’t turn at first. But then—

A scent. Not jasmine. Something softer. A mix of morning rain and sun-warmed cotton.

I looked.

And for the first time in months, something inside me… paused.

She stood beside me, phone in hand, pretending not to notice I was there. But her presence crackled. Not loud. Just undeniable. Like déjà vu.

She didn’t look like Selene.

But she felt like the dream.

The one I kept sketching in the margins of notebooks, the one who wore different faces but always had the same eyes.

The same ache.

She was staring down at her screen, but I was looking right at her.

And I couldn’t breathe.

Not because she was beautiful—though she was—but because some part of me already knew her. Deeply. Quietly. Like a name you don’t remember but still trust.

The elevator jerked slightly. She stumbled, just a bit, and our shoulders touched.

She apologized softly.

And I nodded.

That was it.

That was all.

But I stepped out first.

The elevator doors slid open at the 8th floor—Human Resources.

My onboarding packet said to go there first. Forms. ID photo. Company policies. All the formalities that made change feel like a checklist.

She stayed inside.

I didn’t look back. I couldn’t. But just before the doors closed, I caught a glimpse of the button she’d pressed.

10.

Later, I found out that was the production floor. The floor she worked on.

But that morning, I didn’t know her name. Didn’t know her voice. Only when she looked at me, it felt like silence right before a song began. Familiar. Fragile.

I spent the rest of that hour half-present. Smiling at HR jokes. Signing contracts. Taking a blurry badge photo I’d hate later. But my mind stayed in the elevator, with a girl I hadn’t met and a number I couldn’t forget.

10.

It wasn’t love.

Not yet.

It was a tremor in the chest.

The stillness between inhaling and exhaling.

The kind of moment you don’t realize is important

Until it becomes the one that changes everything.

After everything I lost in Baguio, after everything I tried to leave behind—

Something in me moved again.

And it started with a girl on the 10th floor.